Everything starts somehow
by Marlowe97
Summary: Pills of unknown origin have been keeping him up and down and tethered to the ground. But it's not a problem. Right?


__a/n:  
>We all know if we open a comment-fic meme, that mad plotbunnies jump out atcha. I was severely attacked by one and it made me write a story(a little one) at gunpoint. I had no choice, I swear! I'm back to finishing "Tabaqui" at once!<em>_

__Written for the "Dean-focused hurt-comfort comment fic meme #5" on hoodie_time_  
>for the prompt by <strong>maypoles<strong>: "We've had two? (I think) references onscreen to Dean taking pills of unknown origin. I'd like something that deals with that. Not necessarily involving addiction (although that can be a part of it if you'd like to take things in that direction) but more like, the why behind that."_

* * *

><p>The shakes had started again.<p>

Nothing bad yet, but his fingers felt tight and itchy, always a sign that it'd get bad later on, and he already had a little problem gripping the wrench tight enough without having to concentrate.

That sucked so bad, Dean had no words for it and on top of those problems he now had to watch out for Sam to not spot it, lest the big worry-wart would get all moopy and emo and 'Dean, this isn't healthy' on him.

Huffing angrily, Dean tightened his grip and went back to work on his girl, knowing Sam was on the other side of their car cleaning the trunk and sorting the herbs that were past their prime. It was pretty dangerous to use too old thyme, Dean had learned the hard way.

Or, well, Dad had learned the hard way but he'd made sure Dean would remember to always have fresh enough ingredients for a banishing ritual against gremlins. Being punished by a blue-painted Marine wasn't half as funny as it sounded.

This task was Sam's today, since Dean had to do something against the worrisome rattle in his baby's guts, and there was just no way for him to sneak up to his brother and get his pills without Sam spotting him.

It hadn't started right away, or even on a definable occasion. It wasn't like Dean woke up one day and got it in his head to take pills for basically everything that usually happened without them.

Well, not for everything, right? He was pretty happy to report that his little friend didn't need any chemical support, thank you for asking. No, not-so-little Dean was fine and dandy and happy to perform, it was just not-so-big Dean that didn't really feel up to the bother anymore.

He could still make any girl happy, no problem, but even when they drooled on him and instantly shifted their attention towards Dean once spotted, he didn't do more than grin and flirt. The mere thought of taking one to her room, undressing and satisfying her in every way she wanted made him cringe and long for his own bed and sleep.

And wasn't that ironic, since he never actually got to sleep when his head hit the pillow?

Not without help anyway.

His first bottle of sleeping-pills had been a gift from Ellen, way back when. He'd not thought about them in a long time, stored them in his duffle-bag for emergencies and never taken them out until he'd followed on his promise to Sam to go and be happy with Lisa.

When he'd arrived, he'd been running on fumes, hadn't slept for more than two hours since Sam had been hijacked by that dick-ass ex-angel and vanished from Detroit. After getting past Lisa's door, past her initial surprise and into her bed - just for sleeping, she'd assured him after he must've looked at her a bit funny – the adrenaline had faded and dropped from his body which usually meant he'd sleep like a rock.

Except, he hadn't. Slept. At all. Not that night, not the following. He'd wandered around the house on socks and barefoot, checking and re-checking the hidden signs and sigils he'd painted and carved the nights before, adding some new ones here and there. He'd watched so much night-time-TV that his eyes had felt like sandpaper and he'd tried drinking himself into sleep so much that one morning Ben had wrinkled his nose at him, even after Dean had showered.

But sleep hadn't come. Instead, his brain had gone on wild loops and weird paths, thinking, thinking, thinking until the morning-light had filtered through the blinds and it was time to wake up anyway. He'd thought about Dad, about Bobby. About Ellen and Jo and Sam Sam Sam Sam Sam. He'd occasionally thought about Alistair and Lucifer, about the Yellow-Eyed bastard who kinda started the whole fucked-up thing. He'd thought about Castiel and why he didn't answer his calls anymore and he'd thought about God and cursed him and pleaded with him and tried to bargain once more but all of that to no avail.

No solution had presented itself, and sleep hadn't come.

When Lisa'd threatened to cuff him to the bed one day if he didn't get some sleep, and after he'd stumbled into one too many doorways from pure exhaustion, he'd relented and taken two of the sleeping-pills from Ellen's stash.

It had felt weird and he still wasn't sure if it was emotion or exhaustion that made tears fall onto his sleep-shirt when he'd held the little innocent bottle in his hand.

He'd lain back on the pillow, had thought about Sam once more and dropped into sleep without even finishing that thought.

And wow, had that been restful sleep!

Dean couldn't remember ever sleeping that well since he'd crawled out of his grave. Usually, his dreams had been filled with name- and faceless terror, with cries and screams and madness and despair, no matter how they'd started out or what he and Sam had done that day.

Oh, he'd gotten really good at hiding it, and he'd probably gotten so used to his inner Hell that it didn't keep him from resting up for the next hunt, the next day. When no one was looking, Dean sometimes thought that it wouldn't have been so bad if Sam had witnessed some of the grosser nightmares and screams that he suppressed without even thinking anymore. Just so Sam would... yeah. What would Sam have done? What could he have done except feel guilty for leaving Dean alone so often, letting him wake up drenched in sweat and utterly alone in a strange room, reeling from possibilities and the utter terror of Sam possibly being dead still in Wyoming.

It wouldn't have done anything, Dean told himself, wouldn't have changed a fucking thing apart from his big oaf of a little brother looking like someone had shot his dog, and really, what kind of brother would wish something so spiteful on his sibling anyway.

Didn't even matter at all, since he'd long lost the ability to wake up screaming, instead freaking out silently and alone.

*

With Lisa, it'd been different. The first nights after finally succumbing to sleep had been hard. He'd dreamed of Sam again and again and again, had woken up shaken and sweating over five times per night on average and more often than not woken Lees with him.

She'd been great, had held him and never commented on the silent tears, never mentioned them or acknowledged them in any way, just curled up on his chest and listened to his heartbeat while scratching her fingernails softly over his shirt. He'd cherished those moments of grief like no others ever, and if you ever asked him - at gunpoint, of course –Dean would say that Lisa's wordless strength had been the reason he'd been able to function quite normally in those bleak months.

Still, even with this wonderful woman on his chest, he'd not been able to shut down his brain. Awake and without purpose, it had started churning and turning and chugging and wouldn't stop ever ever ever.

Not to mention the toll on Lisa. Dean had believed her when she'd said she understood and didn't mind. Yes, he'd believed her, still did, yet her eyes'd been tired and bloodshot after weeks and weeks of not enough sleep, her face pale and even her dark hair hanging listlessly around her head.

So he'd taken the pills again, just to shut that brain of his up, just to get his body some rest.

In hindsight, that was probably the beginning of his… well, Dean might call it problem if he was ever honest with himself. Sam certainly would.

Because sleeping pills had the bad habit of making him drowsy, made him feel like he was stuffed full of wool and stored in a room with clouds of cotton-candy, all sticky and sweet and soft. He was fine when he was working, in fact he'd been fine doing anything that needed done – and quite a lot that didn't – but everything was too loopy to make him feel alright and one day James, the carpenter, had offered him some speed. Hearing his dad inside his head for the whole day hadn't lessened the awesome affect the little bright pill had had on him. It had sharpened his senses to complete clarity, had shoved away the clouds of cotton, had made him feel alive and capable to take on the world.

It'd been times when he'd been flying like that that made him look for clues on how to break Sam out and it had been those times that had him come crashing down hard and fast. It had nearly killed him – literally, if Ben hadn't come home and interrupted the fond look he'd given his gun. That'd been too close a call, not just because the kid would've had to find his body all gory and bloody but also because he really, really hadn't wanted to die. Oh no, not because of some fucked-up promise. No. 'Twas because he… hadn't wanted to risk missing Sam, like those weird, crazy Italian kids had done in Romeo and Juliet.

Shut up, he'd had to read it three times in three different schools!

Not to mention that he'd really liked living with Lisa. And then there was this uncertainty about suicides and their possible afterlife-destination.

Yeah. So being high as a kite hadn't worked out so great and Dean had started to look for the best dosage to get his brain on the right level of "normal", taking mellower stuff to prevent a deep fall.

Best had worked a combination of uppers and downers, spiked with sleeping-pills every two days. Maybe it was just Dean, maybe it was the alcohol he added to the mix now and then – and then again – but simple reduction of the drug didn't do shit. He'd sill dropped, still burned on his way down and even though he'd never looked at his guns again, not like that, he'd still been freaked by the possibility of not being in control, of feeling every nerve tingle under his skin and his hands shaking and his fingers feeling thick and stuffy.

So he'd found some downers that took the edge off the high he was seeking, also reducing the shakes to nearly non-existent.

And yes, it had been quite an interesting adventure to find the right supplier for his meds.

"You done yet?" Sam asked from his side and Dean jerked up and hit his head on the hood, cursing someone's parentage when the wrench dropped into the engine-room with a loud _clingbangclack_

"Dammit, Sam! Warn a guy, will ya! Shit, no, I'm not done yet, fuck" with even shakier fingers, he tried to get the tool out of the narrow space, nearly managing until he snagged his nail on a screw or a clinch-nut or something entirely invisibly from above. "Shitdammitfuckfuckfuckingouch!" he yelled, yanking his hand out and ripping some skin away on another metal-obstruction, painful and sharp and absolutely unnecessary.

It wasn't much, a minor injury, not worthy of mentioning at all, but it still brought tears to his eyes, clenched his heart and pressed his lungs until it felt like Dean would burst from sheer emotion. This sucked, the world sucked, his life sucked, everyone wanted him dead and he couldn't even repair his car anymore!

"Let me get it, my arms are longer" Sam offered, no joke or tease audible in his voice, no mirth visible in his face. "It's just this one nut, right? I can do it. Just take a break"

Stupid, big emo-Sam. Stupid, well-meaning, meddlin' little brother. Why couldn't he leave well enough alone why did he need to stick his nose in anything. Why… why didn't he leave Dean by the roadside, off to college or some other bright future, why did the world rip all that away from the one Winchester who'd had the opportunity to be normal, to be happy?

Why didn't it start to rain so Dean wouldn't have to suppress his angry tears?

With a sigh, he leaned against the car-door, sucking on his grease-stained bleeding hand and staring out into nothing. There was too much nothing around him, he thought, too much destruction, pain and despair.

Still, Sam was there, lightening up some days of extreme gloom and glooming some of the brighter ones, acting as his own brand of meds. It'd be easy to stop taking the pills, Dean reasoned. He didn't really need them anyway, and it wasn't like he was addicted. No, it hadn't gone that far, he just took them when his head wasn't straight, or when his hands started shaking again.

Wasn't that often anyway, only sometimes, when Dean couldn't stop thinking about stuff and when he couldn't get his eyes to close without showing him exploding friends, burning brothers or fathers and millions upon millions of paths not taken, doors not opened and opportunities lost.

Maybe he should just stop taking them at all, give Sam a little more credit when it came to dealing with shit. The kid was doing not too bad with his flashbacks, so maybe the whole 'facing-your-nightmares'-stuff wasn't so far off the mark.

"I'm done. Wanna check?"

"Naw, if it still rattles, I'll just let you charm the next mechanic who'll find us the spare parts, brain"

"Ha-ha. Wasn't my idea to weasel your way into Dougie's heart with all the talk about classic cars, man"

Dean mock-shuddered at the memory but grinned. It had been fun, up until Dougie had asked him for his number with that unmistakable gleam of interest. He'd still made him a good price for the part, even though Dean had to set him straight. So to speak.

"Yeah, gimme the toolbox and go find the way to Minor Creek. Map's behind the passenger-seat"

"Aye-aye, mon capitan"

"That's right, boy, acknowledging my superiority will get you very far" Dean opened the trunk, whistling over the admirably tidy space and stored the toolbox in its rightful place, fastening the straps so it wouldn't turn loose and roll all over their gear and maybe even damage his baby when it'd bump into the body.

"Superior bullshitting-skills, I'll admit to those" Sam laughed and Dean grinned. This was fun, this was close to living again, this was alright for their fucked-up life.

He closed the trunk with a heavy _thunk_ and made his way to the driver's side, swallowing the two pills he'd taken from his duffle and grimacing at the bitter taste.

Tomorrow, he'd stop taking them, he swore. Wasn't like he needed them anyway…

~end~ 


End file.
